“YAKKITY YAKS”—HOW I FEEL ABOUT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. Tyler Cowen criticizes eloquently the way that people speak about people on the autistic spectrum. He gives examples at the beginning of his article of well-meaning academics whose writings about autism reflect what he calls a “dehumanizing ideology.” However, strangely, I found it charming that Temple Grandin refers to people who are not on the spectrum as “yakkity yaks” (who apparently sit around the campfire socializing.) Kids, I am generally sympathetic to political correctness insofar as it calls attention to lack of courtesy and respect for others. It really comes down to etiquette. We all tend to say things which can be hurtful, and hurtful words are part of our language. Political correctness has a bad reputation because of the penalties which are inflicted by people who enjoy inflicting penalties. Politeness has traditionally been enforced by sanctions that are themselves polite—because on the whole that kind of sanction is effective.
Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
“YAKKITY YAKS”—HOW I FEEL ABOUT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
Sunday, February 28th, 2010THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM.
Saturday, February 27th, 2010THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM. Here are some things I learned from the articles I linked to yesterday: 1. Temple Grandin says that “The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic…because you keep learning, you keep learning how to behave.” 2. Temple Grandin compares this learning to acting: “It’s like being in a play; I’m always in a play.” Interestingly, Tyler Cowen cites a psychologist who says that “acting is a profession well-represented on the autistic spectrum.” 3. Temple Grandin thinks in pictures. Bari Weiss calls this “the defining characteristic of her mind.” 4. It is very important to recognize that there is a spectrum of autistic characteristics. 5. Tyler Cowen has a long list of cognitive skills—I counted ten of them in one paragraph—that people in the autistic spectrum are better in. 6. Cowen views “higher (and lower) education as teaching people to be more autistic in many of their basic cognitive skills.”
ACHIEVEMENTS BY PEOPLE ON THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM.
Friday, February 26th, 2010ACHIEVEMENTS BY PEOPLE ON THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM. This interview with Temple Grandin by Bari Weiss in the Wall Street Journal (February 20-21) begins with her speculation that it was somebody on the autistic spectrum who made the first stone spear. She adds that “without some autistic traits you wouldn’t even have a recording device” to use in the interview. Bari Weiss describes Temple Grandin as “easily the most famous autistic woman in the world.” Temple Grandin gives reasons for her claim: “People on the ’spectrum’ tend to be just as obsessed with things and the way things work as they are uninterested in social relationships. And, as Ms. Grandin observed, people interested in things make important advancements—particularly in engineering, science and technology.” Tyler Cowen, the economist, has making similar arguments, including in this article. He says: “there is a lot more autism in higher education than most of us realize. It’s not just ’special needs’ students but also our valedictorians, our faculty members, and yes —sometimes —our administrators.” Cowen gives the powerful example of Vernon L. Smith, a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, who “attributes his extreme focus, his attention to detail, and his scholarly persistence to his connections to the autism spectrum.”
THE SOLUTION TO “THE PHANTOM OF HEILBRONN” (SPOILER ALERT).
Thursday, February 25th, 2010THE SOLUTION TO “THE PHANTOM OF HEILBRONN” (SPOILER ALERT). I posted here about “The Phantom of Heilbrunn.” Here is a wikipedia article about the solution to the mystery: “In late March 2009, investigators came to the conclusion that the “Phantom” criminal did not exist, and the DNA recovered at the crime scenes had already been present on the cotton swabs used for collecting DNA samples.” The clues I referred to are all the bizarre aspects of the crimes with only a genetic connection among them. Annalisa noted how improbable it was that the Phantom of Heilbronn had worked with several accomplices without any of them betraying her.
DINOSAURS WITH COLORED FEATHERS.
Friday, February 19th, 2010DINOSAURS WITH COLORED FEATHERS. I remember when science articles discussed the theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs as being a maverick view. A problem for its proponents was a lack of evidence. This wikipedia article describes how “it was not until the early 1990s that clearly nonavian dinosaur fossils were discovered with preserved feathers.” Now this article from the New York Times reports that scientists have shown that melanosomes (pigment loaded sacs) survived for millions of years in fossil bird feathers. Studies of feathers provide additional support for the theory that birds descended from a group of bipedal dinosaurs called theropods. Anchiornis (anchioris huxleyi), a chicken-sized theropod, had long feathers on its arms and legs. The melanosomes from Anchiornis fossils permit a description of Anchiornis which sounds like it came from one of my bird books: “Anchiornis had a crown of reddish feathers surrounding dark gray ones, and its face was mottled with reddish and black spots. Its body was dark gray, but its limb feathers were white with black tips.” There is a color picture of an Anchioris in the New York Times article.
NOT TAKING YOUR MEDICINE—38%.
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010NOT TAKING YOUR MEDICINE—38%. When Mary Jane was facing a difficult prognosis for breast cancer sixteen years ago, our friend Joe Foley consoled me by pointing out that survival rates are lowered because many patients don’t follow through on their treatment. According to the Avery Johnson article, the UnitedHealth records show that “38% weren’t filling prescriptions for their aromatase inhibitors, drugs that stop the estrogen production that can feed certain cancers.” There is a great deal of attention paid to the fact that having free or subsidized medical care can lead to excessive use of medical tests and procedures. It is less often noted that medical tests and procedures are not like ice cream or candy. They are, at best, time consuming and irksome. Often they are frightening and painful. There is undertesting and undertreatment as well as overtesting and overtreatment.
DATA FOR STUDIES ON AVASTIN.
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010DATA FOR STUDIES OF AVASTIN. The Avery Johnson article says that the UnitedHealth Group data shows that Avastin is used heavily for treating two types of cancer for which it has not been approved. It is prescribed for 24% of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer and for 41% of colon-cancer patients. The article says that the company characterizes these uses as “inappropriate”, and the focus of the article and the program seems to be on whether treatments conform to various professional protocols. My thought is that this is a wonderful opportunity to find out about the effectiveness of Avastin in different circumstances and provide guidance for future gold-standard clinical trials.
A DATA BASE FOR CANCER.
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010A DATA BASE FOR CANCER RESEARCH. I have argued, for example here, that there should be a lot more data collection and statistical analysis on the thousands of cancer cases that are treated each year and took particular note that “all the off-label uses of cancer drugs (estimated to be about 75% of cancer drug use) for which the results of treatment are apparently not systematically studied.” This article in the Wall Street Journal (February 9) by Avery Johnson reports that UnitedHealth Group has been collecting clinical information about treatment of individual patients from over 1300 oncologists for three years. This could and should provide a database for large sample statistical analyses. They would not be clinical gold standard controlled experiments. They should, however, provide suggestive information about the effects of different treatments on tumors with a range of characteristics. I would think that young researchers would be eager to get hold of the data.
HEARTS PHYSICALLY BROKEN BY LOVE.
Monday, February 15th, 2010HEARTS PHYSICALLY BROKEN BY LOVE. This article by Ron Winslow in the Wall Street Journal tells of the discovery in the early 1990’s of “broken-heart syndrome.” The syndrome gets its name because it seems especially to affect patients who have recently lost a spouse. “Acute emotion releases adrenalin that overwhelms the heart.” The patient’s left ventricle takes on a characteristic shape (there is an illustration in the Ron Winslow article). Most patients recover quickly. The formal name of the condition is “stress-induced cardiomyopathy.”
A WIKI APPROACH FOR SCIENTIFIC COMPUTER CODE?
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010A WIKI APPROACH FOR SCIENTIFIC COMPUTER CODE? This article in the Guardian calls for publication of the computer code for scientific articles. It is surprising to me (actually, I am appalled) that this is not already done as a matter of course. We live in an age of Firefox and wikipedia. The article cites a study of a sample of scientific computer code which “showed that the software had an unacceptably high level of detectable inconsistencies.” The article points out that while commercial scientific software is often of poor quality, “scientific software developed in our universities and research institutes is often produced by scientists with no training in software engineering and with no quality mechanisms in place and so, no doubt, the occurrence of errors will be even higher.”
